Brain scans reveal power of Super Bowl adverts

Brain scans of Super Bowl viewers suggest that certain commercials more effectively excite the brain's empathy and reward centres, making them "light up".

Companies spend millions of dollars to air commercials during the Super Bowl - one of the most watched US broadcasts of the year - in hopes that the advertisements will capture consumers' imaginations and their brand loyalty. Now researchers in California have used brain scans to gauge how much of an impression the ads from 2006's sporting spectacle might have had on the brain.

Five volunteers were tested on Sunday evening, just after the American football championship ended, as part of a preliminary experiment led by Marco Iacoboni at the University of California, Los Angeles, US. Their brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they watched more than 20 commercials which had aired during Super Bowl.

"The complete analysis shows that the best ads are the Disney/NFL ad and the Sierra Mist ad," he says, referring to the theme-park and soft-drink commercials. "In the Disney ad, NFL players ecstatically repeat I am going to Disney'. I can see how this ad can elicit strong empathic responses."

"The Sierra Mist ad is a funny ad about an airport search. Maybe viewers identify with the character because they are fed up with these extensive airport searches that are not convincingly effective," Iacoboni suggests.

Mirror neurons

The researchers found that the ads produced variable effects in the reward-related areas of the brain, such as the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex. They also found that some commercials caused more activity in the brain regions known to contain "mirror neurons", indicating empathy.

Previous studies have revealed that mirror neurons fire in an animal's brain when it completes a task or sees a counterpart from the same species complete that same task.

The team also looked at how the Super Bowl ads sparked activity in the visual and auditory regions of the brain. But Iacoboni says that the commercials typically produced only short-lived activity in these areas.

"A bad ad would show activity only in visual and auditory areas," he says, adding that good commercials also left a lasting impression on the brain's reward and empathy centres.

Beer and women

One ad that succeeded in striking an emotional note, according to the study, was the commercial for a Michelob beer, which featured a woman playing American football with her friends. In an initial analysis of two of the five volunteers, the researchers found that this sketch caused mirror neurons in the female brain to fire, indicating empathy. But in the male subject the commercial produced activity in reward-centres of the brain.

But the ad for Budweiser beer, which featured a "secret fridge", managed to stir the brain's visual areas only. This suggests that it might be less effective but, in fact, consumer rankings by newspaper USA Today put this commercial as the most popular.

Iacoboni stresses that the study examined only a few people, which limits the generality of the findings. "We have too few subjects to achieve the statistically reliable effects required by peer-reviewed journal articles," Iacoboni explains. "However, we think we gained great insights about the human brain, and we will likely use these insights in future studies."

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Watching a woman playing American football with her friends in a Michelob beer ad triggered the brain's empathy centre (shown by arrow) to fire in women only (Image: Jonas Kaplan)